So you think there might be international action on climate change

The United States is the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world. So without action by by the US Government the idea of an international agreement on climate change is simply a joke. And a sick joke it will prove to be if the predictions about the likely result of next month's Congressional elections prove correct. Republicans are strongly fancied to take control of the House of Representatives and are given a 50 per cent chance of controlling the Senate as well. Yet the chances of a Republican dominated Congress taking action to stop global warming are virtually nil. As the New York Times explained in an editorial this morning: With one exception, none of the Republicans running for the Senate — including the 20 or so with a serious chance of winning — accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming. The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. [former vice president Dick] Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy.